194 
SUDDEN SUCCUMBING. 
to be lashed down tight enough to secure them against 
falling oil'. Notwithstanding our caution in rejecting 
every superfluous burden, the weight, including bags 
and tent, was eleven hundred pounds. 
And yet our march for the first six hours was very 
cheering. We made by vigorous pulls and lifts nearly 
a mile an hour, and reached the new floes before we 
were absolutely weary. Our sledge sustained the trial 
admirably. Olilsen, restored by hope, walked steadily 
at the leading belt of the sledge-lines; and 1 began to 
feel certain of reaching our halfway station of the day 
before, where we had left our tent. But we were still 
nine miles from it, when, almost without premonition, 
we all became aware of an alarming failure of our 
energies. 
I was of course familiar with the benumbed and 
almost lethargic sensation of extreme cold; and once, 
when exposed for some hours in the midwinter of 
Baffin’s Bay, I had experienced symptoms which I 
compared to the diffused paralysis of the electro-gal¬ 
vanic shock. But I had treated the sleepy comfort of 
freezing as something like the embellishment of ro¬ 
mance. I had evidence now to the contrary. 
Bonsall and Morton, two of our stoutest men, came 
to me, begging permission to sleep: “they were not 
cold: the wind did not enter them now: a little sleep 
was all they wanted.” Presently Hans was found 
nearly stiff under a drift; and Thomas, bolt upright, 
land his e} 7 es closed, and could hardly articulate. At 
last, John Blake threw himself on the snow, and re- 
